Vox.com’s content director Max Fisher — who recently suggested that Israel exploited the deaths of three teens — thinks it’s worth noting that a lot more Palestinians have died during Israeli-Palestinian conflicts than Israelis:

The Israel-Palestine conflict has killed **14 times** more Palestinians than Israelis since 2000 http://t.co/1SIbeQWnVY

The conflict remains at a relatively low level until, every couple of years, it flares up with heavy Israeli strikes on Gaza that also cost a large number of Palestinian lives. This status quo, on net, clearly causes a large number of Palestinian lives. But it kills very few Israelis, which is a big part of why Israeli voters and leaders have appeared willing to accept it.

This Israeli strategy is sometimes described as “cutting the grass.” In this thinking, Israel never really solves the conflict or even tries; it tolerates a level of violence from Gaza-based militant groups, but every few years bombs and maybe invades Gaza to weaken militants there and destroy their weapons – to cut the grass. It treats the Israel-Palestine conflict, at least as it pertains to Gaza, as something to be managed rather than solved.

It is important to stress that this strategy is not one that ever produces peace or that is designed to lead to a solution. It accepts a low level of Israeli deaths from rocket fire, and occasionally dozens or hundreds of Palestinian deaths from air strikes, as status quo.

In other words, this is Israel’s fault.

Where did this idea that both sides in a war should have an equal number of deaths come from? It's just bizarre. #IsraelUnderFire

Israel is defending itself from attacks. The terrorists, by contrast, have no intention of keeping Palestinian civilians safe. To them, civilians are nothing more than tools to prop up their deadly cause. Behold, Mr. Fisher, Hamas’ preferred “defense” strategy:

Human shields working as intended RT @Max_Fisher The Israel-Palestine conflict has killed **14x** more Palestinians than Israelis since 2000

This post initially reported erroneous fatality statistics. I had misread B’Tselem’s data tables in a way that significantly under-counted Israeli deaths, as well as some Palestinian deaths. The charts and statistics in this post have been corrected to reflect the accurate count. I regret the error and thank Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner for pointing it out to me.